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Community Corner

Spotify Looks to Convert Teenagers From iTunes, Piracy

Service hopes social aspect will catch on among younger users

Watch out iTunes, Pandora and Amazon; there is a new player entering the music battle. Sweden’s Spotify hit the shores of the United States two weeks ago, receiving rave reviews by those who have gotten their hands on the service.

The secret to Spotify's popularity may be because it brings instant gratification —the ability to listen to any song in Spotify’s massive library at any time. After a successful run in Europe, the company is hoping that it will catch on in the United States.

“The response so far from the US has already been amazing,” said a Spotify spokesperson. “We hope that people in Palo Alto will love Spotify as much as they do in Europe.”

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Local teenagers have already begun exploring the service, which is free for a limited time for new users. While the service still has kinks, its growth shows promise.

“Spotify is a good idea, but people need to be able to share their entire music library instead of just playlists,” said junior Wesley Shiau. “Spotify is good only as long as people share their music, and beyond that it doesn’t seem like anything new.”

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Spotify is most concerned with the continuing issue of piracy in the music industry, but hopes their service is simply a better alternative.

“Our biggest competitor is piracy rather than other streaming services,” said the spokesperson. “Our goal is to offer a user experience that is higher quality, simpler and altogether better than piracy.”

Spencer Schoben, a senior at Palo Alto High School agreed that piracy is an issue, pointing out the differences between teenagers today and an older generation that bought entire albums worth of music.

“Our generation just doesn't grasp the concept of paying for music per song or per album,” Schoben said. “Spotify allows people to pay per month and then listen to whatever song they want, which I feel is much more of what teenagers want.”

Shiau believes that while the service has potential, it can’t hold up against the lure of piracy for some teenagers. Schoben, however, believes that it has a chance to accomplish this feat.

“Compared to piracy, it is worse of course since piracy is music for ‘free’ and you still have to pay to use Spotify offline,” Shiau said.

“I think it has a good chance of decreasing music piracy and causing teenagers to listen to music legally again,” Schoben said. “I think Spotify is exactly what teenagers want and is something they would likely even pay for.”

Spotify may or may not succeed in turning teenagers into paying customers of music, but for now, the new service is flashy and has started to catch on among them.

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Spotify is operating in a limited phase in the United States. One either has to receive an invite from a subscriber or request one from Spotify’s website. One can bypass obtaining an invitation by buying a service plan.

 

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